●   Cisco DNA Center on the Cisco Catalyst  2960-XR Series Switches provides a simple web user interface to enterprise network customers for day-zero plug and play, switch discovery and management, topology visualization, and software image management. For details on Cisco DNA Center features, please refer to dnac.cisco.com.

●   Cisco Network Plug and Play is supported using the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) and DNA Center on Cisco Catalyst  2960-XR Series Switches. This provides a simple, secure, unified, and integrated offering for enterprise network customers to ease new branch or campus device rollouts or for provisioning updates to an existing network with a near zero-touch deployment experience. For detailed information about APIC-EM-based Plug-and-Play capabilities, please refer to Cisco Network Plug and Play.

Cisco Prime Infrastructure provides comprehensive network lifecycle management, including an extensive library of easy-to-use features to automate the initial and day-to-day management of your Cisco network. Cisco Prime technology integrates hardware and software platform expertise and operational experience into a powerful set of workflow-driven configuration, monitoring, troubleshooting, reporting, and administrative tools. 

Licenses have to be purchased for using the Cisco Prime Infrastructure, Cisco Network Plug and Play, or Cisco DNA Center network management solution.

Stacking

Cisco FlexStack-Plus provides stacking of up to eight Cisco Catalyst 2960-XR Series Switches with the optional FlexStack-Plus module (Figure 5).

The FlexStack-Plus module is hot swappable and can be added to any Cisco Catalyst  2960-XR Series Switch with a FlexStack-Plus slot. Switches connected to a stack will automatically upgrade to the stack’s Cisco IOS Software version and transparently join the stack without additional intervention.